One from the vaults because the columnists have suddenly decided that Labour needs to connect more with communities. Me for @NewSocialistUK last year on the now-defunct Labour Community Organising Unit. http://newsocialist.org.uk/activists-organisers/

Community organising can combine (and has combined) two aspects: firstly, as with Tredegar and significant parts of the women’s movement, the direct, collective meeting of needs; secondly, the building of collective power to make demands on the state and capital.

In 2019, Westminster residents campaigned with the COU Liza against the Duke of Westminster- the world’s youngest billionaire- who was planning to demolish their homes on an estate. After four months of campaigning with the COU, the residents won.

Unfortunately Party officials felt as threatened by organisers and grassroots power as by candidates from other parties. Community organising in areas where there is a Labour council threatens the councillors because it necessarily involves eroding some of their power.

MPs and councillors presume a monopoly of legitimate political knowledge and the capacity to act, derived from the state. Community knowledge challenges this monopoly by institutionalising and activating knowledge and capacities to act from below.

MPs and councillors are often uninterested in anything that isn’t geared towards maintaining and extending their power. The COU was perceived to be as big a threat as the Tories. This was clearly ludicrous. Every councillor and MP in the country should be a community organiser.

Labour’s regional offices have for too long behaved like vassal states, and the battle they fought with the COU and the party’s left is cultural as well as political. Despite regional directors being paid by members, many of them were hoping for Labour to be defeated.

Why? So Corbyn (the COU was his baby) could be deposed- not primarily because of his ideas around wealth redistribution, but because they see Party members and local communities as peasants who must be kept outside the city walls.

They have no interest in building relationships and power with communities. In former “Red Wall” seats, had anybody been paying attention, it would have been clear that Labour’s support had been haemorrhaging for decades.

Yet when offered a means of reversing that trend, the regional officials rejected it. Why? Because it threatened their power, their status, and their opinions of themselves as expert technocrats with a deep understanding of politics.

Labour’s poor performance has been blamed on being too woke, when in reality Labour councillors were being kicked for having to implement measures effectively imposed by the Tory government’s commitment to austerity, or (rightly) punished for implementing it enthusiastically.

There are Labour councils who are unsympathetic to unions, who deprive residents of vital public services, and who seem to glean an almost libidinal pleasure from attacking marginalised groups such as sex workers or Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

A strategy that centres self-interested, spiteful, contemptuous nonentities in attempts to reconnect Labour with the very same communities they have spent years betraying is one that would only be adopted by someone determined for the community organising project to fail.

That’s what Starmer has done though.
Until councillors and MPs start turning up at protests and picket lines, and until they address the contradictions between what they do and what they say they believe, they’ll continue to get kicked.

Rejecting the idea of politics as the preserve of an unaccountable elite is both an ideological and pragmatic commitment for community organisers. By expanding the sense of what politics can be beyond the executive and legislative, Labour might be able to undo the damage done.

Galvanising communities by forging new solidarities and repairing old ones is crucial. Trust in politicians has justifiably evaporated. The political class has consistently proved itself to be detached, insulated, and ineffectual. Bureaucracy has long been a dirty word.

For evidence of the shortcomings of top down movements led by discredited or outright disgraced politicians, look no further than the ruinous post-referendum Remain campaign.

A campaign that failed in all of its (avowed) objectives, hardened Brexit, and strong-armed Labour into a position that saw it obliterated at the ballot box.

After decades of defeat, during which trade unions have been reduced to barely-relevant husks and working class communities have been systematically dismantled, it is vital to demonstrate that the working class can win.

Labour needs to create a new mutuality, a new collective defiance, and a renewed trust in the Party as a vehicle that can advance the interests of these communities. Words ceased to be sufficient years ago—it’s time to show and do.